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used, and so forth. Such a study would certainly bring a major contribution to the understanding of the esoteric Buddhist episteme in premodern Japan and its actual devotional practices involving signs and semiotic substances in general. We will return to this subject in a subsequent lecture. 3. Pragmatic Aspects of the “Secret of Language” 3.1. Gomitsu Practice as Speech Act The use of magic and ritual languages such as shingon and darani is often explained, still today, by recourse to the concept of “sympathetic magic” as defined by Frazer in the nineteenth century. This concept presupposes a systematic confusion, on the part of the performers of magical utterances, of words and things and the superstitious belief in the action of ineffable and mysterious potencies. In Japan, scholars often explain shingon’s alleged power upon reality as the result of belief in kotodama. The term, meaning “the spirit of words,” appears for the first time in the Man’yøsh¥, a collection of poems compiled in the second half of the eighth century. As far as we know, the ancient Yamato term kötö-tama referred to the belief that words were receptacles of supernatural power; accordingly, the utterance of certain words in certain cases could affect reality. As Herbert Plutschow has written, kotodama… indicates the belief that word and thing are ontically identical, that a word contains the power of the thing it stands for and if used in an appropriate manner and setting this sound would be uttered in order to summon the power of that thing to control it or to appropriate its vital energies for the benefit of humans (Plutschow 1990: 11) This belief was related to an ancient world view that has not been yet clearly explained. Scholars usually interpret kotodama as a form of sympathetic magic (see Miller 1977: 275), since a word could cause the event or produce the object it referred (Yanabu 1972: 101). However, it is probably time to go beyond Frazer and reconsider/reinterpret kotodama in more complex terms. New approaches are therefore 34
necessary. An interesting suggestion has been recently proposed by Herbert Plutschow, who wrote: “A kotodama word is not only powerful in itself but also in its place in a system of associations. The power of a word extended therefore to the power of poetry” (ibid.) Plutschow argues that the concept of kotodama played an essential role in the development of Japanese poetry. In this context, kotodama would refer not to vaguely defined (and, frankly, incredible) magical effects, but more interestingly to symbolic associations and the capacity to induce emotions and recall memories proper to poetic expression. It is however important to emphasize, following Roy Andrew Miller, that contemporary interpretations of the concept of kotodama are based on the discussions by Edo and Meiji periods Nativist scholars (kokugakusha), which had very little to do with the ancient conceptions of the Nara period. In particular, kotodama is often mentioned in nationalistic discussions about the uniqueness of Japanese language (Miller 1977, 1982), and therefore the term, rather than describing an historical intellectual formation, is rather prescribing an agenda for cultural nationalism. Another, more fundamental problem arises when trying to interpret esoteric Buddhist shingon and darani through kotodama. The term kotodama does appear in a few texts dating to the eighth and ninth centuries, but only very sporadically and in a non-systematic fashion. It is hard to believe that it was used at the time to designate a coherent and important intellectual formation—and in any case, the information we have is not enough to make any sound inferences. What is significant, though, is that no mention of kotodama ever occurs in the major Buddhist works on the philosophy of language written in medieval Japan, so that it is possible to doubt that medieval author even knew the term. Kotodama begins to be mentioned and discussed in a systematic fashion only in the Edo period. The Shingon monk and early Nativist scholar Keich¥ (1640-1701) was perhaps the first, as far as we know, to make an explicit connection between shingon/mantras and kotodama. His ideas were later developed by other authors from the standpoint of Japanese cultural supremacism. For all these reasons, the received idea that kotodama has always been at the basis of the Japanese attitude toward language, and that among other things it has allowed the adoption in Japan of shingon and other foreign mantric expressions, appears questionable. 21 21 For example, Toyoda Kunio summarizes the general position of scholarship, according to which the facility with which the Japanese accepted shingon doctrines was due to the preexistence of similar, autochthonous conceptions concerning kotodama: Toyoda 1980: 163. Hori Ichirø argued that the intersection of ideas about Indian darani on a kotodama-like background was at the origin in Japan of 35
Page 1 and 2: Fabio Rambelli Lecture 3 Gomitsu an
Page 3 and 4: of formulae, privileging the vocal
Page 5 and 6: (b¥ja, Jp. shuji) which combine to
Page 7 and 8: on the one hand, and samådhi (the
Page 9 and 10: espective, and different, ways to u
Page 11 and 12: ecame entities of a structured ling
Page 13 and 14: In traditional Indian treatises, ma
Page 15 and 16: Sanskrit possess an ordinary meanin
Page 17 and 18: and the elsewhere (ikai) were often
Page 19 and 20: In any case, in East Asian, and in
Page 21 and 22: Mantric expressions are not used in
Page 23 and 24: Shittan refers to a Gupta variant o
Page 25 and 26: the Tang period had only a limited
Page 27 and 28: monuments carry inscribed shittan c
Page 29 and 30: constitutes a powerful symbolic ins
Page 31 and 32: absolute entities, as a confirmatio
Page 33: (verticality, horizontality, obliqu
Page 37 and 38: always the cause of effects of vari
Page 39 and 40: elief in their effectiveness, that
Page 41 and 42: effects on reality. As such, they c
Page 43 and 44: The conditions of felicity discusse
Page 45 and 46: Those who chants or transcribes a f
Page 47 and 48: nature of the semiotic status of th
Page 49 and 50: coarse and shallow of the methods o
Page 51 and 52: 1972 K¥kai: Major Works. New York:
Page 53 and 54: 1987 “Sø no jushika to ø no sai

3 - Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

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